An oil rig in the Tamar natural gas field off the Israeli coast, June 23, 2014. (Moshe Shai/Flash 90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – After years of false starts, Israeli negotiators went to Geneva last week for talks aimed at ending a long-running conflict with a regional adversary. It’s not the Palestinians. It’s Turkey. Once a key partner of Israel, Turkey in recent years has been a thorn in… Read more »
Bernie Sanders making his victory speech in Concord after winning the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Feb. 9, 2016. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Bernie Sanders is having a month of historic firsts. In New Hampshire on Tuesday night, he handily won the Democratic Party contest, becoming the first Jew to win a presidential primary. In Iowa, he became the first Jewish presidential candidate — the first non-Christian, even… Read more »
A photo of Kibbutz Shaar Haamakim as it was in 1963, when Bernie Sanders volunteered there for several months. (Ben Sales)
SHAAR HAAMAKIM, Israel (JTA) — Every morning, Bernie Sanders would wake up at 4:10 a.m. to pick apples and pears. Leaving the cabin he shared with a few other American college student volunteers, Sanders would have a quick bite of bread before heading out to the orchard. After 2… Read more »
A Hanukkah celebration at the Kitchen in San Francisco on Dec. 9, 2015. (Q Lam)
NEW YORK (JTA) – In the summer of 2011, Lizzi Heydemann returned to her native Chicago to establish a Jewish community loosely modeled on Ikar, the Los Angeles congregation where she had spent two years as a rabbinic intern. She set about harvesting email addresses and putting out the… Read more »
Jonathan Greenblatt, left, with the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, October 2015. (Courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Framed by a slide of two young guys in jeans and tees playing ping-pong on the Facebook campus, Jonathan Greenblatt described an event hosted by the social media behemoth in Palo Alto, California, the week before. “Some of the stuff we’ve done has been really exciting, like… Read more »
The new entrance of the Holocaust History Center, sharing a plaza with the Jewish History Museum, will allow for easy traffic flow from one museum to the other.
In just over two weeks, Tucsonans will get their first look at the Rose and Maurice Silverman Jewish History Museum Campus, home to the newly expanded Gould Family Holocaust History Center as well as the Friedman Family Jewish History Museum, which also has been refurbished. The grand re-opening on… Read more »
When the performers of the Capitol Steps take the stage at the Fox Tucson Theater, there’s a good chance Barack Obama will sing a rock song, Joe Biden will sing a show tune and Chris Christie will dance. Even Vladimir Putin, shirtless, of course, cannot stay off the stage.… Read more »
Elaine Hall with participants from “The Miracle Project,” a theater and expressive arts program for people living with autism and other disabilities (Courtesy Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona)
If she didn’t have it all, Elaine Hall had a lot of it. A Hollywood acting coach at the top of her game, Hall worked with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and John Goodman. Her specialty was coaching children. Only one thing was missing. What she really wanted was… Read more »
(JTA) — The Iowa caucuses are over – and the first real test of the presidential candidates’ viability gave us more questions than answers. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won the Republican caucus on Monday night, relegating Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire, to second place. Both Trump and Cruz ran… Read more »
David Adelman, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, introducing Hillary Clinton before a speech at federation headquarters, Jan. 25, 2016. (Josh Tapper)
DES MOINES, Iowa (JTA) – Ten minutes into her speech at the Jewish Federation of Des Moines on Monday, Hillary Rodham Clinton had a coughing fit. She popped a lozenge, but that didn’t help. After a few long seconds and still gasping for air, Clinton turned to federation president… Read more »
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton participating in a town hall forum at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 25, 2016. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Hillary Rodham Clinton made her ability to talk Israel’s leadership down from military action a centerpiece of her foreign policy credentials. Clinton, appearing Monday evening at a town hall-style event at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, was asked to outline her foreign policy philosophy. Two of… Read more »
A still from “The Settlers,” which premiered Jan. 22 at the Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Shimon Dotan)
PARK CITY, Utah (JTA) – What is a settler? That’s the question that opens the new documentary film “The Settlers,” which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival here. Written and directed by Shimon Dotan, the film offers an answer almost immediately: a religious fundamentalist driven by messianic… Read more »
Rabbis David Ellenson, left, and Eugene Borowitz in 2009, on the occasion of the latter's 85th birthday. (Courtesy of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion)
WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) — In Ethics of the Fathers, the rabbis teach that we must grant respect and honor to an individual who teaches us even the smallest bit of knowledge. For those of us who were the students of Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, who died last week at the… Read more »
Bernie Madoff arriving at Manhattan federal court, March 12, 2009. (Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — True story: Back in 2008, one of my son’s favorite games was one we called “Bernie Madoff.” It was basically cops and robbers — I played a police officer and Elie, 3, was Bernie. The object of the game was that I chased him until… Read more »
The Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem on a rainy day, Oct. 25, 2015. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israel’s government on Sunday approved a compromise to expand the non-Orthodox Jewish prayer section of the Western Wall, putting to rest the decades-long fight between Women of the Wall and Israel’s haredi Orthodox religious establishment. The deal achieves what had been an elusive goal: an interdenominational consensus on Judaism’s… Read more »
Restaurants at Disney World in Orlando serve kosher meals by special request, but 48-hour advance notice is required. (Uriel Heilman)
ORLANDO, Fla. (JTA) – As any religiously observant Jew knows, going on vacation can take a lot of work. Aside from the customary preparations, there are the added complications of organizing kosher food and Shabbat logistics. Many kosher tourists spend days before trips precooking meals to freeze and bring… Read more »
Mayim Bialik at the 21st Annual Critics' Choice Awards in Santa Monica, California, Jan. 17, 2016. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Pity Jennifer Lopez. As far as memorable red carpet moments go, she set such a high bar at the 2000 Grammys with her now-legendary plunging green Versace dress that she seemed destined to never top it. But many fashion insiders (and followers) have been buzzing about the actress-singer’s… Read more »
Alan Morinis Alan Morinis was not looking to become a spiritual leader when he discovered Judaism’s Mussar tradition at the age of 47. “I’m a little chagrined to admit it,” he says of stumbling over the millennia-old tradition almost 20 years ago, “but I was really searching for something in my… Read more »
Historic copies of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ which was released in a new, annotated edition in Germany this month. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Say the name Adolf Hitler and an immediate reaction is evoked in the hearts and minds of many, based on the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi dictator specifically against those of Jewish descent. Now that name has reemerged as an annotated edition of his autobiography, “Mein Kampf,” or “My… Read more »
Israel Pickholtz Professional genealogist Israel Pickholtz will discuss the challenges of working with information provided by DNA testing in his talk, “Endogamy: Genetic Genealogy — Challenges for Jewish Research,” at the Southern Arizona Jewish Genealogy Society’s meeting on Sunday, Feb. 7 at 2 p.m. at Congregation Bet Shalom. Pickholtz says that… Read more »
